earthquake

My parents have been telling me about the earthquake in Sichuan.

My mother told a story about a teacher who grabbed the nearest four students when the earthquake began. He stuffed them under his lectern, and covered it with his own body. He was crushed by falling debris, as were all the other students in the classroom, but the four children under the lectern lived.

My dad told me about a group of hourly workers. After hearing about the earthquake damage, they loaded up bike carts with blankets, food, and water. They biked for many hours into the earthquake region, and dispersed their much-needed supplies. They didn't have much money themselves, and were sorely feeling the bridge and road tolls extracted on the way over.

(Example of a bike cart below)


Quite a number of people have donated impressive amounts of money. This earthquake has revealed a lot of heroes.

choices

I'm buying a new bed frame. Overstock has worked well for me, so I'm considering these frames from their site:

A.


B.


C.


I'm told that my existing home decor scheme is to locally maximize each piece of furniture. i.e. I have the prettiest chandelier, the prettiest dining room table, the prettiest clock, but together they are a mishmash. The whole is less than the sum of the parts.

To combat this, I have to figure out what goes with my dresser.



and jewelry chest:



and the room itself (sky-blue walls and light pine hardwood floors).

Gratitude experiment, part 1.

I decided to do a little experiment, wherein I write a post to people throughout my life that I'm grateful to, whom I never got to thank. We'll see if turns out to be boring.

The first person I'm grateful to is a boy from Salt Lake City, who was my second-grade classmate. It was a year after my family moved to the US, and I was still learning English. This proved aggravating on a daily basis. I didn't know the right words to protest when another student stole my dessert at lunch, I failed an assignment because I couldn't understand the instructions, etc.

One day the teacher announced that we were going to play the game of telephone. The other American students got excited and moved to sit in a big circle on the carpet. I convinced one of them to slowly explain the rules to me. Needless to say, when I learned that the goal is to comprehend a English sentence and repeat it back to the next person, I became filled with apprehension.

I sat a third of the way down the circle, and watched as the teacher whispered for several seconds into the first student's ear. Her face lit up, and she chuckled as she repeated it to the next student. The sentence moved rapidly around the circle, and within a couple minutes, the girl to my right was whispering a long string of syllables into my ear.

To my horror, I could not decipher any meaning out of what she said.

I made her repeat it.

I still didn't understand it. At my insistence, she repeated it two more times, with growing exasperation. Finally, I turned with dread to the boy to my left, and regurgitated the first few syllables which I had blindly memorized.

They were "super california."

The boy to my left heard my accented syllables, and immediately said, "Don't worry. I know what it is." He was so reassuring.

He turned to the kid to his left, and by the muffled whispering, I knew that somehow he actually got the phrase out of what I said. And the phrase kept going around the circle.

Years later, I watched "Mary Poppins" for the first time, and realized that the teacher -- in her infinite wisdom -- had chosen the phrase "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

I still remember the exact expression and tone of voice when that boy said, "I know what it is." He was really kind. Thank you, boy of unknown name from Salt Lake City.

ambivalent

Tonight I saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and it was much funnier than expected.


Almost all the funny lines were from Aldous Snow. Like this one, where he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt that's a gift from his girlfriend. He hates the shirt.

Aldous Snow: [after spilling red wine on his shirt] Oh God, take my eyes, but not the shirt!

Or responding to one of his fans:

Matthew: I have a question for you real quick. What did you think of my demo? Did you get it?

Aldous Snow: I was gonna listen to that, but then, um, I just carried on living my life.

Or his description of his vacation with his girlfriend:

Aldous Snow: I don't know how you put up with her. It's like Hitler. Maybe that's going too far. No, it's not -- it's like a holiday with Hitler.

I wish more people were this hilarious in real-life. However, the reason the character is so funny is largely due to his cruelty. It wouldn't be good for more people to go around dashing youngsters' dreams and mocking the fashion tastes of their loved ones.

But it's so funny!

Conflicted.

i would've asked it 500 questions already

Recently I advised a friend not to fret about her relationship going long-distance.

I advised a different friend to dump his unsupportive girlfriend.

I advised a third friend to calm down about his youtube account suspension, and to resume eating and sleeping while he's waiting for his appeal.

Then I got to thinking, how do these people know whether to take my advice? Maybe I give bad advice but I make it sound convincing. I recall a demonstration of this ten years ago:

Me: "Do you want to go eat fondue sometime?"

Iondra : "Like where?"

Me: "There are a couple restaurants that serve it."

Iondra: "What exactly do they serve?"

Me: "Usually there's a cheese fondue, and an oil fondue, and then a chocolate fondue."

Iondra : "Hm. All right, I tried to figure it out from context, but now I have to ask: What is fondue??"

Me: "It's a pot with liquid in it, like a hot pot. You dip solid food into it, and it gets coated with the liquid. So you would dip bread into the cheese, fruit into the chocolate, etc."

Iondra: "I see. [in very authoritative voice] I'm sure the cheese is fine, but the oil fondue sounds bad."

Me: "I haven't tried it. I guess you could be right. It -- Wait a second! Just a minute ago, you didn't even know what fondue was! Why should I listen to you at all?"

Anyhow, I think someone should build a product / social network app / Web 2.0 site / Web 3.0 site to fix this. Every time you need advice, you'll post your quandry onto the site with multiple choice answers. Like:

"Should I date the sister of my ex from five years ago? YES vs. NO."

"What type of phone should I buy? BLACKBERRY vs. IPHONE."

"My husband drunkenly groped my sister. DTMFA vs. FORGIVE HIM."

The service will poll all of your friends, who will vote.

After some time elapses, you go back and use hindsight to select what the correct choice was. Then each of the voters will get a boost or drop in their Advice Rating, based on what they selected.

The site takes the ratings into account when giving you a Final Answer to your question. Ergo, when it tells you to DTMFA, you know it was biased toward your wise friends, and discounted from your foolish friends.

Come to think of it, a number of prediction market applications can likely be adopted for this purpose.

if you forgot too, write a comment so that I feel even better

Me: "I feel like I'm not being a good enough daughter, because I'm not spending enough time with my mom."

Cindy: "You're letting her stay at your house."

Me: "Yeah, but that's not enough. Anyway, what did you do for Mother's Day?"

Cindy: "I actually forgot to call my mom."

Me: "What? You didn't call your mom at all?"

Cindy: "Not until the next day. She even sent me an sms, but I was busy and by the time I thought of it, it was 2am her time."

Me: "Oh my God. Well, at least I called my mom yesterday and ate dinner with her."

Cindy: [making a face like :-| and nodding] "I was pretty bad."

Me: "You totally are! I'm a better daughter than you, at least! This is great!"

Cindy: [nodding abashedly]

Me: "I knew you could make me feel better. Thank you! I'm so glad we talked."

Cindy: "You're welcome."

I like fake inspirational posters

Wenarto's friend made these mock inspirational posters. Alas, you won't find them as funny as I do, unless you know Wenarto.


This photo was actually taken by my brother Tom, at Wenarto's request. It was New Year's in Paris. All the stores were closed but Wenarto had to go to the bathroom.


Wenarto owns wigs, costumes, and backdrops for making youtube videos. They usually involve him singing opera.

sad letter

From Dan Savage's article this week. This letter is so sad:

I grew up in a small town, in a devout Catholic home, and I had no clue there was more than one kind of sexuality. I had thoughts and feelings I didn't know what to do with, but I don't think I'd ever heard the word "gay," much less knew what it meant.

I'd had sex with girls, but I didn't have my first experience with another guy until I was 18. I was at an ex-girlfriend's party, and it wasn't pretty; everyone was bombed or high. Except for this older guy: late-20s, maybe 30, somebody's brother. I knew he was looking at me in a way that men weren't supposed to look at other men. We got talking, realized we both hated the party, and agreed to go for a walk in what by then had to be the wee hours. We were in a big deserted park, grass, bushes, streetlights, when he turned to me and I thought, "He's going to kiss me and I'm going to throw up." He did; I didn't.

I was so awkward. I had no idea how to do the things my feelings were prompting me to do. I knew I wanted to top him, but didn't know that word or how exactly to get there. He was so patient and gentle and understanding. This is not a story of a teenage kid being preyed on. I took the lead; he guided. He never pushed anything. He helped introduce me to myself.

He lived halfway down the East Coast, but he kept in regular touch with calls and long affectionate letters, checking in on me, listening to me, reassuring me that whatever I felt was okay.

Not everyone felt that way. This was almost 40 years ago. When I got comfortable enough to tell my parents I thought I was gay, they had me committed to a mental hospital. That's another story, and not a very nice one. I was there till I was 21 and could legally insist on being released. Shock treatments, megadoses of Thorazine. I don't know why I didn't go truly nuts. I think a big part of it was the memory of that kindness and that closeness, and the rightness of it, for me. I lost a lot during those years locked up. I lost track of that wonderful guy who'd been just what I needed when nobody else understood.

I never had a chance to thank him, so I'd like to do that now, and maybe imagine he's reading this and remembering too.

Anonymous

shall I make a logical informed decision... or just go with pasta

I'm thinking of buying the Rosetta Stone level 1 software for Italian.


Alipé showed me the version for Mandarin, and it looks fun. One task asked him to match a photo to the sentence "This flower is big." Choice A was a tiny clover under a magnifying glass. Choice B was a little girl holding the stem of a two-foot-tall super-daisy. The girl was cute. The flower was cute. Good job, Rosetta Stone.

Anyhow, my reason for learning Italian is to visit Venice for a couple weeks this winter. That desire arose after I, along with every other woman in the United States, read the book Eat, Pray, Love. The "Eat" portion takes place in Italy. It was frivolous reading about the author spending her days eating pasta. Yet now I'm consumed with a desire to learn Italian. Good job, book.

However, I think this is a poor reason for choosing a new language to learn. It would be wiser to use factors like influence in world affairs and socio-literary culture, in which case Italian is not in the top ten.

Or I can learn from Richard Feynman's error, and base my decision on ridiculous reasons:

And since I didn't know yet where I was going to end up in South America, I decided to take Spanish, because the great majority of the countries there speak Spanish.

So when it was time to register for the class, we were standing outside, ready to go into the classroom, when this pneumatic blonde came along. You know how once in a while you get this feeling, WOW? She looked terrific. I said to myself, "Maybe she's going to be in the Spanish class - that'll be great!" But no, she walked into the Portuguese class. So I figured, What the hell - I might as well learn Portuguese.

I started walking right after her when this Anglo -Saxon attitude that I have said, "No, that's not a good reason to decide which language to speak." So I went back and signed up for the Spanish class, to my utter regret.

Some time later I was at a Physics Society meeting in New York, and I found myself sitting next to Jaime Tiomno, from Brazil, and he asked, "What are you going to do next summer?"

"I'm thinking of visiting South America."

"Oh! Why don't you come to Brazil? I'll get a position for you at the Center for Physical Research."

So now I had to convert all that Spanish into Portuguese!

statements that didn't work

Tonight at dinner, Dan dissected the Myers-Brigg scale, in particular the introvert vs. extrovert label. He gave the classic definition of how introverts recharge their batteries through time alone, a concept he strongly identifies with.

Me: I'm starting to feel like our conversations are just combinations of the same topics, repeated.

Dan: Yeah, we need to determine the eigenvectors of our conversation. Then we can never talk again. I can recharge my battery forever!

Me: That's not good, Dan. Batteries that are fully charged for too long will lose their capacity.

Dan: [look of contempt]

---

At lunch with Dan some time ago, at Google Cafe 150.

Me: Speaking of Asian fetishes, here comes Ozzir.

Ozzir: [walking over to our table] Hey.

Me: Dan, this is my friend Ozzir from YouTube. Ozzir, Dan.

Dan: [to Ozzir] So you're being used as an example of a white guy with an Asian fetish.

Ozzir: 'Fetish' sounds so strong. I like to call it an Asian 'preference'.

Dan: But you can't be that bad. I mean, you may have an Asian fetish, but at least you didn't move to China.

Ozzir: I moved to Japan. I'm just visiting for this week.

Tom's 21st

Tom turned 21 last Wednesday. It was also the day that my relative was discharged from the hospital, so we had a double-celebration at home.


Chinese takeout at my house, and beer.


Chocolate marble cake.

---

On Sunday, I took Tom to afternoon tea as another birthday celebration. You might think that I forced this upon him (akin to if he took me to a Counterstrike competition for my birthday), but he actually enjoyed it.



In fact, Tom picked the teahouse. He chose this one in Fremont, because they carry tea hats which the patrons can wear:





I daresay we matched the hats to our outfits reasonably well.

vera-ly it is

While running errands with Tom, I bought a bottle of aloe vera for Tristan's sunburned ankles. Later the three of us ate dinner at Amarin. Midway through, I remembered that I left the aloe in my car.

Me: "I need to give the aloe vera to Tristan after dinner. Everyone remember this. Associate it with getting up from our chairs, please. As we rise to leave, remember the aloe. Remember the aloe."

Tom: "Is that like, 'Remember the Alamo'?"

rice rockets

My brother bought a car yesterday, from a good friend of mine.



It's a 9-year-old Honda Accord, which is by definition a better car than mine. Since I have a 9-year-old Honda Civic. A pic of my car, from when I was robbed a few years ago:



Perhaps we will get our cars serviced together this weekend.

Tom: "I'm going to put a big ol' racing stripe along the side!"

then she made me do thirty push-ups

Talking to Megan (my personal trainer) during my training session today.

Me: [while doing bicep raises] "I got invited to a black-and-white event."

Megan: "Oooh! What are you going to wear?"

Me: "There's a simple black dress I've had for a while."

Megan: [waving hand dismissively] "Hey, let's go shopping at Christian Dior!"

Me: "I don't know..."

Megan: "The butterfly cut is hot right now. Don't you want a dress that's in vogue?"

Me: "No."

Megan: "Why not?"

Me: "Anyway, I'm sure my date won't care what dress I wear."

Megan: "So what? You'll appreciate it, right? Look, I've gone on dates just to wear certain dresses. I was like, 'I'm dating my dress right now, and I love him!""

Me: "Your dress is a him? Shouldn't it be female?"

Megan: "When it's on top of me, it's a guy."

Me: "Fair enough."

Megan: [demonstrating a push-up followed by a jump] "Do ten of these."

Me: [starting push-up] "Anyway, you've seen my fashion sense. We've gone out, and I was dressed fine."

Megan: [observing my push-up] "Fine for a regular -- Niniane! Why are you wearing two differently colored socks?"

Me: "Okay, sometimes you gotta work with what you have. In the gym bag."

Megan: "You're wearing one piggy sock and one black sock, and you say your fashion sense is fine?"

Me: "My fashion sense knew that mismatched socks are wrong! I just didn't have a choice!"

Megan: "I am definitely taking you shopping. You need me in your life."

Me: "I'm not sure about this."

Megan: "Relax, we'll get something classic, and elegant. I'm not going to make you wear a freakin' banana on your head."

Me: "Good, because a banana is neither black nor white."

Megan: [clenching arms] "I'm really trying not to smack you right now."

Me: "Unless it's Banana Republic."

ha ha h -- wait a minute, you're insulting me too

niniane: it's coming up close on your last day...
Domino: yeah
Domino: if I were to stay, I might join the XXX team.
Domino: their manager is good
niniane: so i hear
Domino: and trustworthy
niniane: yeah, that's important in a manager. And not always easy to find
Domino: why would good and trustworthy people become managers?

it was good

So, I'm a shell of the human being I was before. There is a lot to do, for work and for my family.

Anyway, one nice thing from last week was dinner at Wenarto's house. Wenarto cooked us capon:

A capon is a cockerel (a male chicken) whose reproductive organs were removed at a young age. Typically, the castration is performed when the chicken is between 6 and 20 weeks old.

Supposedly the castration makes the chicken fatter. And happier, if memory serves me correctly. Because it doesn't have to stress over chasing the hens around?

basic instructions, the comic strip

Is everyone else already aware of the comic strip "Basic Instructions"? I might be lagging behind the crowd again, like with Dinosaur Comics and xkcd.

Anyway, I discovered it recently, and I'm now a huge fan.

of sour grapes and godiva chocolates

Much appreciation to all the people who left supportive comments about my family situation. I am especially grateful to Nina, who wrote:

People who maintain a reservoir of Zen calm while a relative is in the ICU probably have something wrong with them anyway.

This sour-grapes mentality is precisely what I needed. Thank you Nina!

Lately I keep remembering an incident from a few years ago. It was a small act of kindness, but I've been thinking of it almost daily.

The incident also involved a relative in a hospital. The illness and person in question were different, but there were similar harrowing qualities of waiting in a hospital room.

After an exhausting 24 hours in the ER, my dad and I stopped at a shopping mall on the way home. I went to a Godiva chocolate store to buy a gift basket for the hospital workers.

The saleswoman came over, as I stood before a shelf with small and large baskets. She asked if she could help, and what kind of basket I was looking for.

"I want one with variety," I said. "It's for doctors and nurses in an ER. Something they can grab quickly as they're walking by."

She paused, then walked to a different shelf behind the register. "You probably want one with both solids and cremes..."

We discussed whether to get one giant box or two medium-sized boxes. I decided on two, for variety. I paid. She wrapped up the basket in plastic with a bow, whle she watched me write the card. My dad stood off to the side, stepping in only once with tips for the card.

We finished the transaction. As I turned to go, the saleswoman reached into the display case and pulled out a chocolate truffle, then another. "For you and your dad," she said, "on the house."

It really stayed with me, this touch of kindness in an otherwise purely professional transaction. The saleswoman probably forgot about it years ago, but I doubt I ever will.

I hope that I showed enough appreciation at the time, to encourage her to do it again for others in the future.

i know how i want to be, but i can't seem to do it

I'm having a difficult time.

A relative is in the hospital, and my mother is staying with me indefinitely while she takes care of him. For a little while, we went together to the hospital. Now she takes the caltrain every morning to the hospital (and back to my townhouse in the evening), while I go to work.

Seeing my relative in the hospital is painful, but this post is not about that.

I keep losing my patience with my mother, over silly things. She turns off her cell phone for hours at a time, and I worry when I can't reach her. When I ask her for the condition of our relative, she tells me a ten-minute chronological tale of the day ("I got up at 7am, cooked some congee, and walked to the caltrain station..."). I have to listen to the entire story to distill it to a single sentence of how my relative is faring. My mother bemoans her lack of time, but refuses to accept any of my offers (such as renting her a car, or giving her cab money).

We're going through a cycle where I speak impatiently to her, and then I feel guilty. I try to call her to make amends, and her phone is off for five hours, and we return to the start of the cycle.

Our whole family is under a lot of stress, so the minor tiffs are not too surprising. But, ideally I would have a reservoir of Zen calm.

Maybe I will try to take more deep breaths, and meditate in the morning and evening.

I know this post is crappily written, without any beginning or ending, nor interesting dialogue or detail. Consider it a window into the past, of how every post on my blog was three years ago.

my favorite April Fool's joke

People have been sending out April Fool's emails all day. But nothing can measure up to my all-time favorite, from Peter Norvig in 2004:

In related news, Google today announced the soft launch of a new chain of restaurants called TG-TF-IDF. (We wanted to use the catchier "Thank God its Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency", but that domain was taken by a cybersquatter.)

Whereas traditional restaurants feature hard-to-use menu systems, the TG-TF-IDF restaurants will allocate a gigacalorie of food to each diner. Diners then enter keyword ingredients and are instantly presented with a list of meals. "If a user has a problem with food, so do we," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of technology, in a statement. The service will be free, but will feature targeted ads printed on the right hand side of the food.

"And while developing TG-TF-IDF was a bit more complicated than we anticipated, we're pleased to be able to offer it to the diner who asked for it."

Google's system was designed by one of its engineers as a "20 percent" project - the scheme which gives Google employees one day a week in which to work on projects that interest them, the company said.

In contrast to the 1Gcal of free food offered by TG-TF-IDF, McDonalds offers a maximum meal size of 1190 cal for $4.99.